That’s
really the question nobody asked, isn’t it? Why do I propose this to be a sexy
cover? And I bet the first answer on everybody’s mind is simple and obvious: Boobs, man… duh. And, yes, I’m sure
breasts are a prominent part of it (no pun intended). But there is so much
more. After all, comic covers with big breasts are a dime a dozen (thankfully),
but not all of them are sexy. And, for me at least, this one is.
So, let me
try to project some of my subterranean libidinal thoughts into this wonderful
cover, maybe misreading it, probably enraging some sensible readers, but – I
hope – not twisting what is there. Or, better yet, what isn’t there. For I
guess what makes this cover so sexy
is precisely what isn’t there.
ALL STAR COMICS #59 sports only the second cover featuring
über-chested heroine Power Girl, who had made her first appearance in “All-Star Super-Squad” in the preceding
issue. As such it is a full plate for that particular kind of reader (yeah,
that’s you, you pussy!) who’s ready to point a vigorous finger at the way such
a powerful feminine character is shown as a defenseless damsel in distress
right from the start. Even if she is presented as less powerful than Earth-1’s
Supergirl and not “as strong as [her]
cousin, Superman, but (…) still ten times as strong as any mere man”, she’s
clearly the main hero in this two-parter. And those who’ve read the story in
#58, and were duly impressed by the feats she packed in the mere four pages she
was in (diverting lava flows, causing the earth to tremble from a single
foot-stomp) will get the measure of the present menace by seeing her in such
dire-straits in the cover at hand. And yet, what dire-straits are those, as
nothing even remotely similar takes place inside the book?
One can
only conjecture. The one thing one can be certain of is that the enigmatic
stone-man’s goal is to take Power Girl. To what end, who can tell? Is it of any
significance that she is the only female in the group? That she is the prize to
be fought over by all those males? But again, why? The anonymous monster,
although clearly male, is markedly sexless.
Copulation
cannot be its intent. However, one cannot help but notice that the artist
intended Power Girl’s breasts (her only sexual attribute that is not hidden by
the colossus’s body) to be level with the monster’s (and Flash’s) groin; it is
a non-sexual and almost subliminal contrast between the cold sexlessness of the
creature , and the soft, nurturing, warm, living
breasts of the powerful girl. It is almost a symbolic depiction of eros and thanatos, eroticism and death.
An equation made even more powerful for nothing in the picture (besides
the reader’s conviction that she’s the hero – although a new one, and therefore
potentially killable) allows us to feel sure that she is still alive.
I’m sure a
lot could be made out of her being the only female in the cover, and the only
one apparently defenseless. But is she? What about the other invisible element
from the cover? Yes, what about you, the reader? Are you not there as well?
Aren’t we all there? That’s what the cover’s composition seems to imply with
its worm’s-eye-view that places the reader on the floor, fallen, already
defeated on the fight with the anonymous colossus. Are you male or female, dear
reader? In what side were you fighting? Was the metal colossus your creature,
were you its victim? Were you trying, as the Flash was, to save your partner?
Or are you about to be saved? Or to be picked up from the floor to be taken
along Power Girl to be subjected to ‘a fate worse than death’?
It is a
cover that takes you back to that magical time when you’re young enough that
you’re still able to immerse yourself as an invisible character in the action; not
yet as grown up as to derive all the sexual implications from the situation depicted,
but already raging with the inner fire stoked by the subconscious eroticism of
the scene.
On a final
note, one’s clearly drawn to Power Girl’s breasts. They literally defy gravity:
In true
Wally Wood style, they look equally and gorgeously enticing even if you choose
to flip the image upside-down. As such, they’re depicted as an erotic note, not
a realist one, and that as always been one of the magnets pulling young readers
to comic books. In it casts into shame the present attempt to de-eroticize
comic-book art, reducing all characters into big shapeless and sexless
colossuses.
